Danish Football Association

The Danish Football Association (DBU) (Danish: Dansk Boldspil-Union;DBU) is the governing body of football in Denmark. It is the organization of the Danish football clubs and runs the professional Danish football leagues and the men's and women's national teams. It is based in the city of Brøndby and is a founding member of both FIFA and UEFA. From 2008, the DBU is also the governing body of futsal in Denmark.

Faroe Islands and Greenland, which are autonomous territories within Kingdom of Denmark, have their own football associations and are not part of the DBU. Greenland is not a member of FIFA or any continental federation, but Faroe Islands is a member of FIFA and UEFA.

The DBU awards the best national team players each year, with an award to the best senior team player, as well as the best player in three of DBU's six national youth teams.

Player of the Year

Since 1963, DBU has awarded the Danish Player of the Year in a vote amongst the Danish players. In the time of amateur football, only players in the domestic league could achieve the prize, and even after the emergence of paid football in 1978, no players in foreign clubs were eligible for the award. When the award was finally opened to all Danish players, domestic and abroad, in 1983, national team captain Morten Olsen was the first player to win the Player of the Year award taking all Danish players into consideration. The record number of award wins is four, by Brian Laudrup (1989, 1992, 1995, and 1997).

Young Players of the Year

The Young Players of the Year Awards on the other hand are sponsored by Arla Foods, the awards were initially known as Mælkens talentpriser (the milk's talent awards) in order to promote the line of dairy products of the company then known as "MD Foods". DBU found new sponsor DONG (later DONG Energy), an oil company, in 2004 but Arla went on to sponsor the prize which was renamed Arla's talentpriser (Arla's talent awards) in 2005.[1][2][3]